Combine harvesters are used for harvesting the crops of agriculturally grown plants, which are received by means of an agricultural harvesting head and conveyed by a feederhouse into the actual combine harvester. There the plants are threshed and the obtained useful parts are cleaned. Feederhouses comprise a housing, in which an endless conveyor having a plurality of traction means arranged laterally one next to another circulates about a lower and an upper deflection roller and conveys the material in an undershot manner upwards into the combine harvester. The endless conveyor comprises conveying strips, each of which is fixed to two traction means, in order to convey the material.
DE 10 2009 036 104 A1, which is considered to define the type of device in question, describes a feederhouse, the traction means of which consist of endless wound cam belts made from fabric-reinforced cross-linked polymer. Cams (variously called “teeth” or “lugs”) are arranged on the inner side of the cam belt and cooperate with cam wheels, of which one is used for driving the belt. The conveying strips are connected to the cam belt by threaded bolts, wherein the heads of the bolts are each vulcanized into a cam and contact an anchor plate having a larger surface area, which is likewise integrated into the cam. The bolts extend through holes in the belt, into which holes bushings can be inserted, and are used for attaching a conveying strip to the outer surface of the belt. In another embodiment, the conveying strips are fastened between two adjacent cams by screws or rivets.
In the embodiment having heads vulcanized into the cam, there is the disadvantage that replacement of a defective threaded bolt is not possible. Replacement is conceivable for the other embodiment, but in this case there is the disadvantage that the bolt head and the anchor plate are arranged between two adjacent cams on the drive side of the belt, which has the effect that the cam wheels cannot penetrate into the bottom of the belt between the cams, which limits the torque transmission.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,743,829 A describes a street cleaning vehicle having an endless conveyor that is composed of two cam belts, which circulate about deflection rollers and are connected to one another by driving strips. The driving strips are attached by threaded bolts embedded in removable cams. The cams are located on the inner side of the cam belt. The threaded bolts are welded (or fixed in some other manner) to retaining plates in the cams, which fix the threaded bolts in the removable cam. The threaded bolts extend through the belt and through bores in the driving strips, which are fixed to the belt by nuts.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,693 A describes another endless conveyor having cam belts and screwed-on conveying strips. The heads of the screws contact plates, which in turn contact the outer surface of the cams. The actual screws extend through bores in the plates, through the cams and the belt and through holes in the conveying strips and are fixed by nuts.
In the conveyors according to U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,743,829 A and 4,697,693 A, the cams having the threaded bolts or screws are removable, so that the fastening means of the driver strips can be replaced in case of damage, but only entire cams can be replaced in U.S. Pat. No. 2,743,829 A and a welded joint is provided between the retaining plate and the threaded bolts, while in U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,693 A there is no torque-transmitting connection between the plates and the screws, so that the screw heads must be held fixed by separate retaining means (wrench) when tightening the nuts.
It is an object of this invention to address the problem of providing an improved feederhouse which does not have the above-mentioned disadvantages or has them only to a reduced extent.